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1 INTRODUCTION: MAIN THEMES

In Part 1, we explain the overall plan of the book, describe the main themes you will see in each chapter, and suggest why these topics are important for the study of

American government and politics. We introduce the central dramatic thread that ties the book together: the struggle for democracy. We make the point that American political life has always involved a struggle among individuals, groups, classes, and institutions over the meaning, extent, and practice of democracy. Finally, in this part, we suggest that although democracy has made great progress over the course of U.S. history, it remains only imperfectly realized and is threatened by new problems that only vigilant and active citizens can solve.

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CHAPTER

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Democracy and American Politics

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

1.1 Explain the meaning of democracy and its use as a standard to evaluate

American government and politics

1.2 Outline a systematic framework for thinking about how government and

politics work

ROBERT MOSES AND THE STRUGGLE FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTING RIGHTS

The right to vote in elections is fundamental to democracy. But many Americans won the right to vote only after long struggles. It took more than 30 years from the adoption of the Constitution, for instance, for most states to allow people without property to vote. Women gained the right to vote in all U.S. elections only in 1920, and young people ages 18 to 20 did so only beginning in 1971. African Americans in the South were not able to vote in any numbers until after 1965, despite the existence of the Fifteenth Amendment--which says that the vote cannot be denied to American citizens on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude--adopted in 1870.

In Mississippi in the early 1960s, only 5 percent of African Americans were registered to vote, and none held elective office, although they accounted for 43 percent of the population. In Walthall County, Mississippi, not a single black was registered, although roughly 3,000 were eligible to vote.1 What kept them away from the polls was a combination of exclusionary voting registration rules, economic pressures, and violent intimidation directed against those brave enough to defy the prevailing political and social order. In Ruleville, Mississippi, civil rights

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activist Fannie Lou Hamer was forced out of the house she was renting on a large plantation; fired from her job; and arrested, jailed, and beaten by police after she tried to register to vote.2

The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (widely known by its initials, SNCC) launched its Voter Education Project in 1961 with the aim of ending black political isolation and powerlessness in the Deep South. Composed primarily of African American college students, SNCC worked to increase black voter registration, to challenge exclusionary rules like the poll tax and the literacy test, and to enter African American candidates in local elections. Its first step was to create "freedom schools" in some of the most segregated counties in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to teach black citizens about their rights under the law. Needless to say, SNCC volunteers tended to attract the malevolent attentions of police, local officials, and vigilantes.

The first of the freedom schools was founded in McComb, Mississippi, by a remarkable young man named Robert Parris Moses. Despite repeated threats to his life and more than a few physical attacks, Moses traveled the back roads of Amite and Walthall counties, meeting with small groups of black

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farmers and encouraging them to attend the SNCC freedom school. At the school, he showed them not only how to fill out the registration forms, but also how to read and interpret the constitution of Mississippi for the "literacy test" required to register to vote. Once people in the school gathered the courage to journey to the county seat to try to register, Moses accompanied them to lend support and encouragement.

Moses paid a price. Over a period of a few months in 1963, he was arrested several times for purported traffic violations; attacked on the main street of Liberty, Mississippi, by the county sheriff's cousin and beaten with the butt end of a knife; assaulted by a mob behind the McComb County courthouse; hit by police while standing in line at the voting registrar's office with one of his students, and dragged to the stationhouse; and jailed for not paying fines connected with his participation in civil rights demonstrations.

Despite the efforts of Moses and other SNCC volunteers, African American registration barely increased in Mississippi in the early 1960s. Black Americans there and in other states of the deep South would have to await the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which provided powerful federal government protections for all American citizens wishing to exercise their

right to vote.3 The Voter Education Project, nevertheless, is considered to have been a key building block of a powerful civil rights movement (see Chapters 8 and 16) that would eventually force federal action in the 1960s to support the citizenship rights of African Americans in the South. Robert Moses and many other African Americans were willing to risk all they had, including their lives, to gain full and equal citizenship in the United States. They surely would have been gratified and perhaps surprised by the election of African American Barack Obama in 2008 as the nation's 44th president.

The struggle for democracy is happening in many countries today, where people fight against all odds for the right to govern themselves and control their own destinies. Americans are participants in this drama, not only because American political ideas and institutions have often provided inspiration for democratic movements in other countries but also because the struggle for democracy continues in our own society. Although honored and celebrated, democracy remains an unfinished project in the United States. The continuing struggle to expand and perfect democracy is a major feature of American history and a defining characteristic of our politics today. It is a central theme of this book.

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Part One Introduction: Main Themes

Democracy

1.1 Explain the meaning of democracy and its use as a standard to evaluate American government and politics

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better, or equal, hope in the world?

--ABRAHAM LINCOLN, FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

With the exception of anarchists who believe that people can live in harmony without any form of authority, it is generally recognized that when people live together in groups and communities, an entity of some sort is needed to provide law and order; to protect against external aggressors; and to provide essential public goods such as roads, waste disposal, education, and clean water. If government is both necessary and inevitable, certain questions become unavoidable: Who is to govern? How are those who govern to be encouraged to serve the best interests of society? How can governments be induced to make policies and laws that citizens consider legitimate and worth obeying? In short, what is the best form of government? For most Americans the answer is clear: democracy.

Democracy's central idea is that ordinary people want to rule themselves and are capable of doing so. This idea has proved enormously popular, not only with Americans, but with people all over the world.4 To be sure, some people would give top priority to other things besides self-government as a requirement for the good society, including such things as safety and security or the need to have religious law and values determine what government does. Nevertheless, the appealing notion that ordinary people can and should rule themselves has spread to all corners of the globe, and the number of people living in democratic societies has increased significantly over the past two decades.5

It is no wonder that a form of government based on the notion that people are capable of ruling themselves enjoys widespread popularity, especially compared with government by the few (e.g., the Communist Party rule in China and Cuba) or by a single person (e.g., the dictatorship of Kim Jung-il in North Korea). But there are many other reasons people have found it appealing. Some political thinkers think that democracy is the form of government that best protects human rights because it is the only one based on a recognition of the intrinsic worth and equality of human beings. Others believe that democracy is the form of government most likely to produce rational policies because it can count on the pooled knowledge and expertise of a society's entire population: a political version, if you will, of the wisdom of the crowds.6 Still others claim that democracies are more stable and long-lasting because their leaders, elected by and answerable to voters, enjoy a strong sense of legitimacy among citizens. Many others suggest that democracy is the form of government most conducive to economic growth and material wellbeing, a claim that is strongly supported by research findings. (Though the historic economic expansionism in China may change thinking on this.) Others, finally, believe that democracy is the form of government under which human beings, because they are free, are best able to develop their natural capacities and talents.7 There are many compelling reasons, then, why democracy has been preferred by so many people.

Americans have supported the idea of self-government and have helped make the nation more democratic over the course of our history.8 Nevertheless, democracy remains an aspiration rather than a finished product. Our goal in this book is to help you think carefully about the quality and progress of democracy in the United States. We want to help you reach your own independent judgments about the

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Chapter 1 Democracy and American Politics

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degree to which politics and government in the United States make our

Can societies function without some kind of government? What do

country more or less democratic.

you imagine would happen if the United States government were

We want to help you draw your own

rendered powerless?

conclusions about which political

practices and institutions in the

United States encourage and sustain popular self-rule and which ones discourage

and undermine it. To do this, we must be clear about the meaning of democracy.

Democratic Origins

Many of our ideas about democracy originated with the ancient Greeks. The Greek

roots of the word democracy are demos, meaning "the people," and kratein, meaning

"to rule." Philosophers and rulers were not friendly to the idea that the many can and

should rule themselves. Most believed that governing was a difficult art, requiring the

greatest sophistication, intelligence, character, and training--certainly not the

province of ordinary people. Aristotle expressed this view in his classic work Politics,

where he observed that democracy "is a government in the hands of men of low

birth, no property, and vulgar employments."

Instead, they preferred rule by a select few (such as an aristocracy, in which a

hereditary nobility rules, or a clerical establishment as in Iran today, where reli-

gious leaders rule) or by an enlightened one, somewhat akin to the philosopher

king described by Plato in his Republic, or a hereditary monarch as in England in

the time of Elizabeth I. Democracy, then, is "rule by the people" or, to put it as the

Greeks did, self-government by the many, as opposed to oligarchy (rule by the few)

or monarchy (rule by the one). The idea that ordinary people might rule them-

selves represents an important departure from most historical beliefs.9 In practice,

throughout human history, most governments have been quite undemocratic.

Inherent in the idea of self-rule by ordinary people is an understanding that

government must serve all its people and that ultimately none but the people them-

selves can be relied on to know, and hence to act in accordance with, their own val-

ues and interests.10

Interestingly, democracy in the sense described here is more a set of utopian

ideas than a description of real societies. Athens of the fifth-century BCE is usually

cited as the purest form of democracy that ever existed. There, all public policies

were decided upon in periodic assemblies of Athenian citizens, though women,

slaves, and immigrants were excluded from participation.11 Nevertheless, the

existence of a society in Athens where "a substantial number of free, adult males

were entitled as citizens to participate freely in government"12 proved

to be a powerful example of what was possible for those who believed

that rule by the people was the best form of government. A handful democracy

of other cases of popular rule kept the democratic idea alive across the centuries. Beginning in the fifth century BCE, for example, India enjoyed long periods marked by spirited and broadly inclusive public debate and discourse on public issues. In the Roman Republic, male citizens elected the consuls, the chief magistrates of the powerful city-state. Also, during the Middle Ages in Europe, some cities were governed directly by the people (at least by men who owned property)

A system of government in which the people rule; rule by the many.

oligarchy Rule by the few, where a minority group holds power over a majority, as in an aristocracy or a clerical establishment.

rather than by nobles, church, or crown. During the Renaissance, monarchy

periods of popular control of government (again, limited to male property holders) occurred in the city-states of Venice, Florence, and Milan.

Rule by the one, where power rests in the hands of a king or queen.

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